Dumpling Day!
I’m crazy about dumplings of any kind, and one of my favourite things to do on a rainy weekend is to make a whole bunch of dumplings of various flavours. They freeze extremely well and after a relaxing afternoon of dumpling making, you have a well-stocked freezer and the security of knowing that for the next few months you are just minutes away from a delicious homemade dumpling feast at any time. Dumpling Day should be a national holiday.
The secret to a good dumpling is the texture of the filling. The filling should be firm, consistent and springy. Too many homemade dumplings suffer from fillings that are separate and grainy, and which do not offer sufficient resistance to the teeth. To make a delicious, springy dumpling we need to look at a chemical process called thermogelling. In a nutshell, muscle fibres in meat and fish contain myofibrillary proteins known as actin and myosin. In solution, these proteins form a gel which, when heated, traps water, fat and starch creating a springy and tender texture. Creating a strong gel depends on a number of factors, including the concentration of these proteins, the temperature of the solution, its acidity and its salt content.
So how does this translate to Dumpling Day? It’s all about creating the right environment for the formation of the gel, and ensuring that your filling has the right amount of water, fat and starch to create the right texture.
First, we need start in the morning with a basic pork mixture. Take minced pork (I used about 1.5 kilos of medium fatty mince and ended up with more than 100 dumplings). The No.1 complaint with homemade dumplings is that they turn out grainy. This is usually due to the mince being too coarse. If you are buying mince, run it through a mincer once or twice more to make sure it is very fine, or if you don’t have a mincer just put it in a food processor and pulse it a few times. The mince should also have a good amount of fat through it. The fattier the mince the more tender the filling will be, but if the mince is too fatty then there will not be enough actual meat (muscle) to release its myosin for creating the gel that gives the filling the right springiness. Once the meat is the right texture, you can make a basic dumpling mix.
Add to the meat some white vinegar, finely chopped spring onion garlic and ginger, salt, white pepper, and cornstarch. Using your hands, mix everything together and knead the mixture very firmly for about 20 minutes. The kneading process is vital, as it releases the myofibrillary protein from its muscular organisation and allows the creation of the gelatinized network that gives you a springy filling. Set this aside in the fridge.
The dumpling mixture is fine as it is, but if you like you can flavour the plain dumpling mixture with anything else you like. Here’s some food for thought:
- Prawn
- Chinese Chives
- Shiso (perilla)
- Chinese Cabbage
- Shiitake Mushrooms
- Water Chestnuts
- Fresh Herbs
- Chili Paste
- Pea Shoots
- etc. etc. etc.
Separate your flavourings into separate bowls and add to them the basic pork mixture. Now take turns with each flavouring, transferring it to your big mixing bowl and kneading until the flavourings are all combined and the mixture becomes springy – around 5 minutes for each batch. Transfer all your bowls of mixture to the fridge and let it rest for a few hours to allow the gel network to form. The saltiness of the mixture and the acidity of the vinegar provide a suitable environment for this process. With the prawns, you have added additional myosin from the prawn meat, so you may notice this mixture becoming very springy, almost to the point of being ‘bouncy’.
After a few hours it’s time to make your dumplings. I won’t go into dumpling folding methods (maybe another time), but you can make wontons, jiaozi, pleated gyoza or simple dumplings for boiling… whatever takes your fancy. For me, I usually make these dumplings in broth so I use a very simple fold that looks fine in soup or boiled. If you wanted to make dumplings for frying (like gyoza) or steaming (like xiaolongbao/shourumpo), then you may prefer a slightly more attractive shape. You can even just leave them as half moons, like some Japanese or Korean dumplings.
Bought gow-gee wrappers are fine, but I prefer to make my own with a very simple boiling water dough. Take 4cups of plain flour and mix with 2 cups of boiling water. Bring the dough together with a spoon and then turn out onto the bench and knead for about 5 minutes until the dough is silky. Cover with plastic wrap and rest for about half an hour. Roll the dough out into long snakes and then pinch off into balls about half the size of a ping pong ball. Roll each ball out to a circle, rolling from the centre to the edge and turning the wrapper 90 degrees after every roll. It should be about 8 rolls until you have a perfectly round wrapper.
My method is to take a gyoza wrapper, place about a teaspoon of dumpling filling in the centre. Dip your finger in a bowl of water and wet the top half edge of the wrapper and fold the bottom half up into a half-moon shape, making sure that the filling is centred, and that there is no air trapped in the wrapper. Then wet the very top of the half-moon and fold each end up to the centre. Store on a tray (making sure they don’t touch each other) and then when each batch is finished, transfer the tray to the freezer.
When they’re well frozen, transfer each batch to a large ziplock bag marked with the corresponding flavour and continue to store in the freezer.
To cook, you can boil the frozen dumplings in salted water or stock for about 10 minutes, or steam them for about 12-15, or even fry them (as for gyoza) or deep fry them. Bear in mind though that the difference between these and commercially frozen dumplings (aside from tasting much better and not containing any of the chemical additives) is that firstly, they don’t contain preservatives so they will not last as long in the freezer and secondly, the filling is not pre-cooked, so you need to make sure they are cooked all the way through.
Personally, I usually steam or boil them for a snack served with some chili oil and black vinegar, or add them to broth for a dumpling soup breakfast. There’s nothing quite like a homemade dumpling, so set aside a day of your weekend for the mental therapy of Dumpling Day.
Adam,
Love your work on Masterchef – it’s been a pleasure to see someone with such talent, humility, generosity, and humour grace the screen each night. All the best for the final week.
Your blog is an absolute gem, especially this Dumpling Day entry. Love that you take a methodical, scientific approach, yet your writing is so personal and evocative. Sorry, I don’t mean to deconstruct your writing, but as an occasional English teacher (formerly more scientific type-doctor) I can’t help but always view writing in this way. I’m forever on the lookout for fine examples to show my 10 and 11 year old students, who will, btw, be cheering you to victory as they’ve judged you the nicest person on the show. (Daylight came second.) Plus they loved your 7 lucky gods signature dish.
I’ve been planning on making dumplings for a long while, and your entry has convinced me it can only be good for the soul. So my particular questions regarding dumplings are : how much vinegar do you need to add to the meat ( eg per kg mince) to allow for optimal thermogelling? And do the structural/textural changes result in something as bouncy as a fish ball, or can you modify the process (eg less time kneading?) to make it less so?
Thanks Adam, keep up the smiles and the great work.
Thanks for the comments. I usually just put in about a tablespoon of vinegar to about a kilo of mince. Seasoning the mince with salt will also create the acid environment you are after. It’s the same principle as adding salt to a mousse mixture for a boudain blanc.
With a meat mince there is not quite enough myosin to get something as springy as a fish ball, but if you use prawn or white fish then you can certainly achieve that texture if you want to.
I love the way the science of this kind of thing often mirrors the old wives’ tales in food. My grandmother talks about making fish balls and only stirring the mix in one direction to get a springier ball. I wanted to tell her that what she was actually doing was aligning the filaments in a thermogel network, but I really don’t think she would have cared 🙂
Definitely get down to making dumplings if you can. I usually have a freezer stocked with them but unfortunately I’m a bit greedy so they never last as long as I think they will.
Thanks Adam,
I was thinking 1 tsp vinegar would be too little and wasn’t sure what 1 TB would do. Definitely not wanting the bouncy fishball consistency – it would remind me too much of being force fed these awful giant bouncy beef balls at yum cha back in the 70s and gagging on them.
My mother also said something about how important stirring the meat mixture is, but hadn’t heard of kneading it, or certainly not to the extent of kneading for 20 minutes. The whole process sounds intriguing – will definitely be trying it next weekend as today’s kitchen experiment will involve making an orange and galangal layer cake (on the proviso 4 hours of productive work gets done first. Hmmm, not looking good) There’s something gloriously therapeutic about performing a “mindless” repetitive task which yields some sort of creation (like crochet, except you can’t eat it, you just gotta wear it) and the yummier the better! And dumplings are such great comfort food.
Quick question : do you also make xiaolongbao? If so, what’s your method of getting soup/gelatin in with the filling? Thanks. I’ll going to try making dumplings with regular filling tomorrow but love xiaolongbao (except when it scalds). And BRILLIANT work this week on MC too.
The trick to combining the soup with the filling is to make a really gelatinous soup so that it will set solid in the fridge.
I prefer not to add gelatin to the mix, and if you use a few pork trotters and/or fish bones for your soup it should set relatively solidly. Then just chop up the jellied soup and add it to your dumpling mix. As the dumpling steams the soup will liquify and you will have a soup-filled dumpling.
Thx Adam. Love pigs trotter jelly! Sorry to bother you yet again (last qu I promise), but would you add the chopped jelly soup to the dumpling mix just prior to encasing it in dough? Ie not really combining/mixing it, which might damage the little structural integrity of the thermogel network? I was reading one recipe which instructed you to mix soup (ie liquid form) and meat filling well, then set it in the fridge… didn’t sound right.
Cheers,
The thermogel network occurs at a molecular level so it doesn’t really matter when you mix the filling with the soup. You could even mix the liquid soup with the filling if you like but I just find that a little messy.
I usually add the chopped jelly just before folding the xiaolongbao (which is an art I am yet to perfect, by the way).
FWIW, I also add chopped jelly to other mince dishes to make them more juicy, such as fried menchi katsu (a Japanese meat cutlet) and even hamburgers.
Ooh thanks for that tip re adding jelly to other mince dishes. I’ll definitely need to try that. Pity I ate pigs trotters last night, and next lot I buy I was going to make crispy pata with…will have to now also consider jellying something up! Yes I imagine kneading something a bit meaty and soupy would not only be messy, but also just feel disgusting.
Thanks for being so generous with your time and in sharing your tips and tricks. I’m really looking forward to Dumpling Day tomorrow – will have 2 young nephews in tow and there’ll definitely be a production line happening in the kitchen. They’ll love the wrapping part (gow gee wrappers only) – just hope their bizarre shapes won’t detract from the textures you’ve described :o) Perhaps I better enforce some quality control standards on the shape of the filling ie must be spherical, and just let them loose with the wrappers.
Cheering you on to victory, but whatever happens, you are a real credit to yourself and your family – they must all be so proud of you.
Dear Adam,
now we dont know if this is you, but we watch masterchef everynight and we want to let you know WE LOVE YOU and whatever happens we always will support your cooking cant wait until you have have a restraunt so we can come and eat your wonderful creative food! Let us know if you get a resturant! GOOD LUCK ADAM !幸運, 私たちはあなたを愛し, from you biggest fans
So I made the dumplings following your instructions for mixing/kneading the meat (I used pork and prawn). It was amazing to feel the change in texture during the 20 min or so of kneading. And the kneading process itself was quite hypnotic – wow, very relaxing! The resulting texture (after 2.5 hours in fridge) I’d best describe as spongy rather than springy or bouncy so don’t know if that is the right result . Unfortunately though, there was rather too much crunch from wood ear and bamboo shoots to really appreciate the texture of the meat when I ate it. Pork mince was also too lean – just couldn’t bring myself to use fatty mince :o). Will definitely make it again though with some adjustments. So thanks!
In terms of kneading the dough, do you do it a certain way? A relative from Shanghai has a most bizarre way of kneading which looks so strange and laborious, but yields the most incredible result. (Unfortunately I did not pay enough attention when she was here to understand or remember her technique except I’ve never seen anyone knead like that). It is finest, thinnest (but not flimsy) skin ever – better than most “professional” dumpling skins I’ve had.
Hi Adam,
Congratulations on winning Masterchef!
I really enjoyed reading through some of these old blogs you’ve written and especially this detailed recipe with scientific particulars. Me and my partner love to make gyoza and have dumpling days, but we could never quite get the right bouncy texture and juicy flavour. I’m really excited to try out your recipe in this rainy Sydney weather we’re having!
I also hope to move to Japan one day with my partner and love hearing your stories!
Omedetou!!!
PS: I hope you won’t be too blown away by all the stalker-ish behaviour you have been/will be receiving 🙂
Adam,
Congratulations! That was truly a well deserved victory – so very thrilled for you. I’ve no doubt you are going to do exactly as Matt P said and take the culinary world by storm. Wish you every success in your new career (it’s going to be brilliant!) and also looking forward to updates to your blog!
Cheers,
Adam, congratulations on your victory. I really enjoyed watching you cook on MasterChef. Hope you have a fantastic career in the culinary arts!
Dear Adam, this dish sounds amazing and delicious, I can’t wait to try it.
p.s. I love your work and ideas, keep up the excellent work.
Dear Adam!
I guess you are the winner from the beginning ! Well done on winning the MC!!
Have a question regarding the dumpling mixture…
Can I put some egg white/ an egg/ soy sauce into the dumpling mixture or it is going to be too runny?
Thank you for sharing your recipes.!
I am looking for a recipe for “from scratch” noodles the ingredients are 2 to 1 rice flour to tapioca flour + limestone paste. You use a little metal handled item with a tightly fitting insert to extrude the noodle paste into boiling water. the noodles are very tiny like, a fine Mai Fun noodle. It could be of Thai origin, as a Hmong friend made it and she was a refugee in Thailand for a long time. I am not able to locate anything coming close. Would appreciate your input Thanks
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Adam..
Thanks so much for this. I’m wondering about the fat percentage in the pork.. I’ve done the 20 min knead in a mixer, and it is still grainy.
I’ve also had some really great dumplings at Mary Chung’s in Boston, and her filling is perfectly springy and just a little pink. This makes me think the key would be to use very little fat, and a very dark pork.
Do you have any suggestions for me? Do you think it’s the fat content, or perhaps using the stand mixer?
It’s definitely the fat percentage in the pork. The less fat you use, the more grainy it will be. I also find that using ordinary mince can be counterproductive depending on how it is ground, and can lead to graininess by being neither small enough nor big enough. Instead of a stand mixer try a food processor to chop the meat more finely almost to a puree, or alternatively just used roughly chopped belly pork, which is fine also.
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